Mike Provencal woke up at 2 a.m. Friday in Japan and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Call it jet leg or a restless mind, he decided to walk down the street from his hotel by Narita International Airport to a place he knew had an Internet connection.

Awaiting him in his e-mail inbox were two reverse 9-1-1 notifications — the second one sent him spiraling.

His home was under mandatory evacuation due to the Black Forest fire that is ravaging homes and properties north of Colorado Springs. As a veteran United Airlines flight attendant, he wasn’t scheduled to return from his six-day Asia trip until June 17th.

Provencal immediately called his wife.

“She proceeded to tell me all she had done. She had been running around all day. And I told her, ‘You’re a wonderwoman,'” Provencal said.

Having worked in the airline industry for 35 years, Provencal immediately began charting a way back home. He domiciles in Houston, which means that every trip he takes he must first commute by air from Colorado Springs to Houston before beginning his shift.

“I immediately called our scheduling office to figure out how I could get back,” Provencal said. “I was thinking, ‘Maybe I can go from Narita to L.A., then to Houston and then to Colorado Springs.’ I had forgotten that they had just started this new nonstop between Narita and Denver.”

When the flight’s crew sat him next to me on Friday’s return flight, he was visibly shaken.

The new nonstop, daily service between Tokyo and Denver is touted for its economic opportunities, but it is in moments like these that it serves a clear humanitarian purpose — to quickly get people across the globe in moments of crisis.

“When I called her, my wife was trying to maintain composure,” Provencal said. “I felt so bad for going to work. I kept apologizing, but this hadn’t happened yet when I left Houston.”

Sitting on an 11-hour plane ride with no access to the outside world, he didn’t know the condition of his house or how close the fire line is to his neighborhood.

Standing up while the rest of the cabin slept, he offered to get me more ice for my water despite the fact that he was off-duty. He then went and chatted with the flight attendants in the front galley before returning to watch another portion of a movie.

Last year’s Waldo Canyon Fire taught Provencal and his wife several lessons that are paying off now.

“We re-boxed all of our important documents and papers in one central location so we could grab them in an emergency,” Provencal said. “My wife has a specific wall of photographs that are important that she grabs in an evacuation. And luckily she was able to find a kennel in downtown Colorado Springs that would take our dogs.”

His wife’s grown son helped her move out heavy, expensive equipment to his house, but they worry that his neighborhood may be evacuated at some point as well.

The couple is no stranger to Colorado wildfires. In 2001, they were living in a more remote cabin in the woods when the Deer Mountain Fire tore through the area.

“We were gone for a week and had no idea that whole time if our house had survived,” Provencal said.

When asked if all of these fires and close calls make him question where he lives, Provencal said, “Yeah, it does. Once again, here we are back in it…we have learned a lot of lessons over the years.”

Laura Keeney writes about aerospace and airlines for The Post. When she's not at work, you can usually find her taking in live music, reading voraciously, or doing something science-related and nerdy. She also loves The Clash ... a lot.

Emilie Rusch covers retail and commercial real estate for The Post. A Wisconsin native and Mizzou graduate, she moved to Colorado in 2012. Before that, she worked at a small daily newspaper in South Dakota. It's the one with Mount Rushmore.